Alicia Nichols' Work Stories: En Comunidad
Welcome to the newest post in the second annual series of guest posts on the subject of our everyday work lives. For the remaining weeks of Ordinary Time, I’ve invited some friends to share a one-day snapshot into their work life that will help us see what they know to be true right now about who they are made to be.
I’ve had the privilege of knowing today’s guest her entire life, and unashamedly say I’m so proud of the way she’s pressed into the heart of God for his callings on her life. Nothing has captured my imagination more than the way she’s created space to know her neighbors at the level of the heart - their mother tongue. When I grow up I want to love my neighbors the way Alica, Rich, Ellie, and Sammy love theirs. May you be encouraged today to love your neighbors, no matter their language.
The Nichols Family
“Barbara Brown Taylor wrote, ‘It is not necessary to take on the whole world at first. Just take the three square feet of earth on which you are sitting, paying close attention to everything that lives within that small estate.’
Simply put, we cannot love what we do not know.
We cannot know what we do not see.
We cannot see anything, really, until we devote ourselves to the lost art of paying attention.”
(Shannon Martin, Minstry of Ordinary Places, 19)
I am in a season of life that suits me and I sure am grateful for it.
I’m at home with my kids, but in an easy stage of that assignment. My daughter is in first grade and, while last year was super challenging, first grade is working out just fine. And my son is three-and-a-half and honestly, three-and-a-half is a super adorable stage. Caring for him, while occasionally involving grief counseling over his having to put on shoes, is mainly filled with storytimes and exploration and listening to him make up stories with his train in the other room. It’s a pretty sweet season, indeed.
In part, my day job includes laundry and grocery shopping and dropping off my daughter at school. Occasionally, it includes washing dishes and cleaning bathrooms, but not nearly as often as it should.
When I look at the “three square feet in front of me” that is our immediate community, I’m humbled by the beauty that I get to be engaged in.
First day of first grade
“Where we’ve been taught to self-protect, we’re now ready to reach out, not just to people who remind us of ourselves, but to anyone in arm’s reach. We’re ready to lean in. We’re just not sure how to start.” (Shannon Martin, Ministry of Ordinary Places, 6)
We live in a phenomenally diverse area and we are so grateful for it.
When we were considering our schooling choices and looking to settle in a location it was as if God opened the doors of heaven and placed this breathtaking opportunity in our laps. Our local public school is dual language Spanish and English. As in, everyone who lives in this district after this program’s starting point spends half the day learning in English and half the day learning in Spanish.
People have different responses to this setup but it is the most dream-come-true, glove-like fit for me… for my heart and education and experience and gifting, so between loads of laundry this is what I pour myself into.
“So often, we get busy trying to make its [acts of love] scale match its significance. If it’s as big a deal as Jesus said it is, then we need to be sure we don’t mess it up. We need to study love, stew on it, pick it apart, and fashion it into something worthy of the title… Putting wheels on our head knowledge and skating out into the world with our hearts exposed sounds terrifying, and the stakes feel too high.” (Shannon Martin, Ministry of Ordinary Places, 50-51)
The “putting wheels on head knowledge” for me is working to support this dual language program in my community.
Underlying this commitment are grand beliefs that are worth standing up for: convictions that each human being is made in God’s image and that his or her honor is worth upholding. Fighting for a more effective way of educating each child in my community is worth engaging in. Teaching my daughter and son that just because their language and skin color are the most common in this country does not mean that they are of more value or have more important voices to be heard. The awareness that language is a form of power and the conviction that that power can be shared.
Those are the big ideas, but the translation of grand concepts to everyday practical steps is no simple task. And that’s where my work comes in.
My work and education background in teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). My degree was in Second Language Acquisition and I took classes about practical ways to learn languages and bilingual education. In other words, I have this great head knowledge to support a dual language community. But, that was all to help other people learn my language. Now we as a family are immersed in this from a very different angle. So I take my head knowledge and I apply it to my own learning and to that of my children. But, I also want to use this knowledge to support and encourage other parents and families in this process.
We very much wanted to be part of this dual language setting, but I remember hearing the fear voiced at the first Kindergarten meeting I attended. Parents were afraid that their children would get lost in these lofty academic goals and they would fall behind in their education. There was this fear that academic platitudes couldn’t alleviate. I was also shocked to feel fear myself that if my daughter became fluent in Spanish and I get stuck in the intermediate level somewhere, might it harm our ability to communicate with each other deeply and well?
MCPL Spanish Children’s Book Recommendations Facebook Group
So I pour myself into a little Facebook community with the goal of sharing the resources available through our public library system, my head knowledge, and our real life experience of this process. I long to help busy parents tap into the resources around us, so I post pictures and summaries of library books; maybe parents who feel overwhelmed by not knowing where to start, can take steps toward engagement in this process. I post stories of my daughter crying when she realized we were listening to “Baby Shark” in Spanish and not English in case other kids are feeling stressed out by the process; maybe our stories can bolster other parents as they navigate this big learning journey. I post links to other inspiring online language articles to help promote the bigger picture and sometimes the academic backing for these endeavors. I post silly memes because sometimes it’s better to not take yourself too seriously.
And I try to work up the courage to use the Spanish I’m learning. Every single time I try, I am floored by how humbling it is to try to communicate anything. I attend a weekly Spanish Conversation Club at the library and I am slowly growing in my vocabulary and boldness and yet, at the playground, I can hardly communicate anything. Working to learn another language has been one of the most humbling things I have ever done and I still wonder if I’ll ever reach a conversational level.
I have a few t-shirts with Spanish phrases on them. When I’m taking my son to a storytime that’s hosted in Spanish I wear them so that people know I’m there on purpose. No one seems to expect me to be trying to learn Spanish. Honestly, it’s all I can do to try at this point. Maybe sometime I’ll work up the courage to get past the most basic of greetings. But, this too is part of my job right now, submitting to humility in order to empower and build up others around me.
Learning to read in Spanish
Alicia Nichols, along with her husband Rich, daughter Ellie, and son Sammy, has recently transplanted from a quieter town in New York state to the ever changing, always growing suburban area of Maryland-near-DC where they began the adventure of learning this new area together. She plugs in by running in her neighborhood, eating in as many new restaurants as they can find, and trying really hard to learn the playground rules as expected by various cultures.
Here’s a benediction and song for all of us and our neighbors.
“O Lord, make your home in me and let me find my home in you, so that I may freely seek the welfare of the community where you have sent me to live. Amen.”
Let Us Be Known, Neighbor Songs by The Porter’s Gate [feat. Diana Gameros]
What story does your daily work tell about who you are called to be in this world right now?
Share with me know in the comments below!
(You can read all of the Work Stories here.)